“We’ve been searching for him—he hasn’t checked in for a long time. And then some information surfaced that made them question his loyalty.”
“Okay. So you need entrance to someplace in order to break him out? A prison? A government building?” She wasn’t sure she could go through with such a heist. Not only would she be finished, but her father would be implicated.
Oz shook his head. “I need a certain set of files that only people with Level F clearances can access.”
She pushed away from the railing. “Easy. Let’s go now.”
She made it as far as the door leading into the house before he caught her elbow and whirled her around to face him.
“What do you mean easy?”
“I mean my father has Level F clearances, and I know his passwords. All of them.” She met his stare.
Several heartbeats passed, and then he lifted his hand to brush a strand of hair off her forehead. “How do you know what the hell Level F even is? That’s way above your pay grade, and your father could be court martialed for disclosing such classified information.” She opened her mouth to reply, but he held up a hand. “Forget it. I’m not involving you. You’ve got enough bad shit following you without this degree of heat.”
“Do you need actual physical access? Or you just need the clearance to look around in the hard drives?
“Clearance.”
“Just like I said—easy. I can get remote access.”
He cocked a brow. A thrill ran through her. She couldn’t quite believe a man as in control as Oz Morgon could be considering her proposal to help him. It left her feeling…important to him.
He fixed his stare on her. “Have you ever heard of Hangar 45?”
She blinked. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. It’s a top secret underground base. A bunker, of sorts. If there’s a threat, they hide the top officials there.”
“And you believe this Lars person is there?”
He shook his head. “No. But they have a library that only can be accessed by those who know about Hangar 45. We believe one person Lars is involved with is in those files.”
Her ears perked up at the word library. “You need research, I’m your woman. I can find anything.”
A hint of a smile began to form in his eyes, spreading to the outer corners and then down to his hard mouth. “I never knew you were an outlaw, Rose.”
She grinned. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
* * * * *
Oz disentangled himself from Rose’s sultry limbs. Her scent followed him, the perfume of their lovemaking thick in his nostrils and urging him to settle between her legs again and wake her with a nice, slow fuck.
He stood at the bedside staring down at her for a moment. It worried him how quickly she tired. Maybe she always dozed after sex—he hadn’t stuck around to know the first time. But more concerning was the toll that being hunted—and on the run—took on her.
He’d seen it before in some of his wards. An Italian-American princess he’d once guarded had been like a drugged woman. He’d spent more time watching her closed bedroom door in the safehouse where he took her than seeing her face.
Shit.
Getting twisted up with a woman would end bad enough. But the fact he’d spent nearly two decades avoiding Rose because of the way she still made him feel when he thought about her spelled catastrophe. Add in the fact he was breaking all his own rules about sleeping with anybody involved in their work, and he’d floated down shit creek without a paddle.
Looking back at all that happened since the general called him, Oz couldn’t think of a damn thing he’d do differently. Even rescuing Rose before saving Gilly…as much as it tore him up, any one of The Guard would have done the same. If he’d hesitated with Rose, he could have lost sight of her and she’d be on a ship right now bound for some human auction house.
His gut clenched at the thought. With extreme effort, he turned from the bed. Grabbing his jeans, he silently crept from the room and closed the door behind him. He needed privacy to make some calls. The less she knew, the better for her in the event things went to hell.
He pulled on his jeans and walked out onto the deck again. Leaning on the railing, he put in a call to Roman.
The man didn’t immediately answer, and Oz’s irritation level jumped. He clenched his jaw and poised his finger over the screen to end the call when the line connected.
“Roman, what the fuck?”
“Sorry, Daddy. We’ve got an issue here.”
Oz straightened from the railing, staring out over the water. “What kind of issue?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re handling it.”
“Roman—”
“You trained us well, Oz. You don’t have to be in charge of every single problem.”
Oz ground his teeth. “You know damn well it’s my job. What the fuck’s happening?”
Roman didn’t immediately respond, but Oz heard several doors closing as the man probably sought privacy within the walls of the church.
“A man came in seeking confession.”
Which meant someone sought help and Oz wouldn’t be there to extend the hand to him. One of the other members of The Guard would need to handle matters. While they were totally fucking capable, it pissed Oz off that he couldn’t be there.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door leading to the inside where Rose slept. Despite what Roman told him, Oz didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“Give me the details,” Oz told him.
“He’s seeking asylum.”
While Oz stared at the waters reflecting the crystalline sky, all he could see were the dark corridors and the stained glass of the church. “From?”
“Mafia ties. His entire family is involved, and he needs to break away.”
WITSEC couldn’t hide anybody from the mafia. If the organized crime group decided to come for a person, they’d fucking find them. The best chance these people had was The Guard.
“Who sent him?”
“One of our missionaries. Dijk.” Roman and some of the others pronounced the name like the American dick, though in the native Dutch, the vowel sounded different.
“Dijk would know who to reach out to in the mafia. The man’s spent his entire career with The Guard making himself one of them. What steps have been taken to protect this man?”
“They’re discussing it in church right now.”
Oz’s chest tightened. Lars was their Deacon, the man who stepped in when Oz was away. “Sister’s leading them?”
“Yes. And I don’t know what the fuck’s being said, because I’m in here talkin’ to your ass.”
“They’ll fill you in later. Right now, I need a unit to help me, and you’re the only one who will trust me on this matter.”
“Lars.” Roman’s voice came out as a flat statement.
“Yes.”
“What the fuck are you planning, Morgon?”
“Lars has always said there are Russian spies in our government.”
“Fuck, don’t tell me you’re planning on hitting up Hangar 45. That’s a death sentence if you’re caught, man. You aren’t going to find any information that will clear Lars’s name. We know he’s in Volgograd right now, and he was sighted entering a building with a man who’s committed political crimes.”